Suspect Red

by L. M. Elliott

  Richard felt himself go cold. God almighty. Don really was “psycho,” just like the article said. He’d never seen Don yell at Ginny like that.

  When he heard his sister start to cry, Richard rushed into the kitchen. “What the heck, Mom?”

  Abigail was looking past him to where Don had exited. Her blue eyes were spilling over with her own tears.

  “Mom!”

  She startled.

  “What the heck’s wrong with Dad?”

  “Wrong?”

  “Yeah, Mom. Wrong. Why does he get so upset and all twitchy? On the Fourth, he about jumped out of his skin when some kids set off cherry bombs near us. Then he practically bit my head off. And what’s with his hands getting all shaky, like when he was worrying over our POWs in Korea? It’s one thing to be all crabby with me, but look at Ginny!”

  Abigail’s surprise changed to horror and then sorrow. “Sit down, Richard,” she said shakily. “Ginny, honey, dry your eyes.”

  Abigail handed Ginny her embroidered handkerchief as Richard put his arm across his sister’s small shoulders.

  “I am going to explain something so you two can understand your dad a little better. But you can never repeat it or ask him about it. He would hate me for telling you. Do you promise?”

  Richard nodded. Snuffling, Ginny crossed her heart and leaned up against Richard the way she used to at story time.

  “All right.” Abigail took a deep breath. “On Don’s last bombing mission over Europe, a Messerschmitt strafed the plane, killing one waist gunner and shooting up the other, your dad’s best friend. That boy was in terrible pain. Don disobeyed his captain and left the tail gun to help his friend. Your dad’s like that, you know. He has a big heart.”

  Ginny and Richard nodded again.

  “But as he was trying to stop his friend’s bleeding, that Messerschmitt circled back and shot at the plane from behind. Your dad wasn’t at his post to fire back.” She hesitated, looking at them nervously. “Their plane went down because of it. The Nazis caught your dad and the other survivors. Things went really bad at the POW stalag. There were SS officers—Hitler’s zealots. They executed your dad’s pilot and copilot, claiming they were trying to escape. They weren’t. The SS just murdered them to terrorize the other prisoners and break their spirits to keep them in line.”

  Horrified, Richard choked out, “Did…Did Dad try to do anything to stop the execution?”

  Abigail sighed. “Yes. And he spent a lot of time starving in solitary confinement as a result. They called it ‘the hole.’ He won’t talk about it.”

  She let that information sink in for a moment before continuing. “Your dad has had a hard time dealing with the guilt he feels about all of that. He rejoined the FBI to have a purpose, a way to make up for his mistake. He was assigned to a really important case—the Judith Coplon case. But…it went all wrong.”

  She paused. A tear slipped down her face. “What got into that woman to make her do such traitorous things is beyond me. She was a cum laude graduate of Barnard College, for pity’s sake. She worked for the Justice Department. I would have loved a job like that.” Abigail shook her head. “But Miss Coplon decided to tip off Soviet agents about FBI investigations. She claims she did it for love—that her Russian boyfriend coerced her. Lord, what some women will do for their men.”

  “Mom, please,” Richard interrupted. “Stick to the story.”

  “What?” Abigail startled out of her thoughts. “Oh, you’re right, son. I’m sorry. So, the FBI figured out that Miss Coplon might be a rotten apple and put her under surveillance. Frankly, they had plenty of evidence against her from her telephone conversations. But your dad says they couldn’t submit the tapes to a jury. I suppose technically, those wiretaps are top secret. The only way to convict Miss Coplon in a court of law was for the FBI to catch her red-handed, in the act of handing an American document to her Soviet contact.”

  She stopped. “Is this all making sense so far?”

  “Yeah,” Richard answered for Ginny. The tough-guy private detectives in his LA noir crime novels constantly railed against the strict requirements for a legal arrest. “So what did the FBI do?”

  “Mr. Hoover created a fake classified memo about atomic power as bait. Miss Coplon swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Two dozen FBI agents were assigned to follow her as she went to meet her handler with that cooked-up document. And by the way—can you imagine—that man’s cover was working at the Soviet embassy’s UN delegation. The United Nations! Isn’t the United Nations supposed to be all about peace and cooperation?”

  “Mom!” Again, Richard shifted impatiently.

  Abigail held up her hand to stop more comment from him. She rubbed her forehead like she had a sudden headache before continuing, “That Miss Coplon was clever. She took precautions. She hid in crowds. She hopped a bus. She changed trains in the subway. The agents lost her for about twenty minutes. When they found her again, she was walking with her Russian beau, side by side, like they were out for a stroll. The agents were afraid that she had already given him the documents while they didn’t have eyes on her, and that the Soviet contact would hightail it back to Russia if they didn’t arrest them both right then and there.

  “So they moved in. But Miss Coplon still had those dang papers in her purse. There were other things in her handbag—FBI reports on spy suspects, for instance, that she had no business carrying around.

  “But…” Abigail pursed her lips before continuing with uncharacteristic anger, “that woman got off scot-free! Her lawyer claimed there wasn’t a proper search warrant issued before her arrest. That she’d been set up. Entrapment, he called it. And there was a huge brouhaha about those FBI wiretaps.”

  Abigail sat back and crossed her arms. “The whole mess was very public and a terrible embarrassment for the agency and Mr. Hoover.”

  “Soooooooo? What’s that got to do with Dad?” Richard asked.

  Abigail lowered her voice. “Your dad was one of those agents who lost Miss Coplon for twenty minutes.”

  She looked at Richard and Ginny intently to make sure they were really listening before continuing. “The suspicion was that Miss Coplon was connected to the Rosenberg ring. You know how your dad feels about all those boys dying in Korea and how the Rosenbergs’ treachery may have helped start that war.”

  She sighed heavily. “Now he carries that guilt, too.” Abigail fidgeted with her curls before continuing. “I think what your dad needs is to break a big, important case. For all his chest-beating, Senator McCarthy hasn’t unearthed any new real Communists like the Rosenbergs. He’s just gotten a lot of liberal-leaning teachers and writers and government workers fired. So Mr. Hoover is itching to get him a real Soviet agent, a real spy to prosecute.”

  She nodded, to herself really, and repeated, “Your dad just needs to break a case to feel redeemed—with Mr. Hoover and with himself. It’ll be like getting back up on a horse after being thrown and then crossing the finish line first.”

  For a long while, Richard stared at their mother, not knowing what to think. He replayed the Coplon information in his head. Was she saying Don was a screwup?

  No, he couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. His dad was a G-man hero. Wasn’t his dad working undercover for Mr. Hoover? Like Philbrick? He had to be. “What’s the deal with the money I saw Mr. Hoover give Dad at Harvey’s?” Richard finally asked, hoping to restore some of his idolatry of Don. “Does that have something to do with a case?”

  Abigail seemed shocked by the question. She frowned. “Don’t ask, honey.”

  There wasn’t any sound of hidden I-know-something-you-don’t pride in her voice. Then she left the room.

  ONE crisp afternoon, Richard came home to the cinnamon and nutmeg smell of pumpkin pie baking.

  “Mom?” he called as he dumped his books by the front door. No answer. She must be in the kitchen. Every year she made a dozen Betty Crocker–perfect pies to be sold at the church’s Thanksgiving bazaar
. And every year she roped Ginny and him into digging the guts out of pumpkins and removing seeds so she could make the puree for those pies. He’d loved fishing around in orange glop as a kid, like playing in a mud puddle, but he just wasn’t in the mood to be tied into one of her bright yellow aprons. It’d been such a lousy day at school.

  Since he and Vladimir didn’t have any classes together, Richard was trying to make a few additional friends. So he’d joined the Classics Club. Actually, he really liked Latin, and the teacher was a cool guy straight out of Princeton. Richard was helping him plan a banquet of the gods, with togas and everything. The teacher had asked him to play Julius Caesar and recite a speech. Richard had been pretty stoked. It was Caesar, after all!

  But unfortunately, Jimmy had gotten wind of it. That day, in the cafeteria, in front of everybody—including Dottie—he’d ridiculed the club. “A bunch of four eyes,” Jimmy had sneered, “playing dress up in sheets. Figures you’d want to join that, Dickie.”

  Later, Dottie had given him the cold shoulder in Biology. Since he’d introduced her to Vladimir, he usually got a smile and a real hello in addition to the fifty minutes he got to stare at the back of her beautiful head. But today? Nada.

  Vladimir was still his friend, at least, despite his making the basketball team. Richard, as he’d anticipated, did not.

  After the incident with Eddie, the broken hoop, and a week of detention, Jimmy spearheaded a campaign to freeze out Vladimir during the tryouts. The bleacher boys fouled him mercilessly as he dribbled in for floaters. But his shots were just too perfect. The coach knew a good thing when he saw it.

  When he couldn’t take down Vladimir, Jimmy told his flunkies to make Richard look as stupid as possible. He was, after all, Vlad’s fellow traveler, his loyal sidekick, the Robin to Vlad’s Batman. Of course, it hadn’t taken much. Even with Vladimir feeding him the ball, Richard dropped it over and over again. The few shots he tried either missed the board entirely or bounced off the rim with a humiliating ka-ping.

  Vladimir had also won Dottie’s heart. Richard hated to admit his jealousy. He reminded himself that he’d never told Vladimir about his lifelong crush on Dottie, so it wasn’t as if Richard could blame him for snaking her. Besides, the songs Richard was secretly writing now were all angsty and tragic in his unrequited love. Good stuff. The pain you have to suffer for art, he figured.

  “Richard, is that you, honey?” Abigail called. “We’re back here.”

  Richard dragged his feet on the way to the kitchen. As he rounded the back corner of the center hallway, he could hear Mrs. Emerson’s voice. Thank goodness, maybe she would distract his mother. She was sitting at the table sipping tea as Abigail rolled out the piecrust dough. Flour covered the table and his mother.

  “There’s my gallant weed puller!” Mrs. Emerson brightened when she saw him. “How are you today?”

  “Hey, Mrs. Emerson.” Richard smiled halfheartedly. “I’m okay, I guess.”

  He’d have to come up with a way to get out of the kitchen fast before Mrs. Emerson thought of some other chore around her house that needed doing. He’d been going back every other week for the weeds since July Fourth. She just seemed so pathetic and all, and so grateful. But she was starting to ask Richard to change lightbulbs and the cat litter now that autumn frost had killed off the weeds. She peppered him with so many questions, it took an hour to do a five-minute favor.

  He gave his mom a quick kiss on her cheek before heading to the refrigerator. Hiding behind the open door, he tried to conjure up some story to get him out of the house or up to his room.

  Ginny was in the sun-drenched kitchen, too, at the ironing board. She threw him a happy “Hi Rich! Want to help me make place mats for Thanksgiving?” She held a roll of wax paper and a bowl full of leaves—orange maple, scarlet dogwood, and golden hickory. Each year she ironed the leaves between wax paper for the holiday dinner.

  Closing the icebox’s door, Richard picked up a carrot-colored leaf and twirled it by its stem. His little sister had an artistic eye. The montages of autumn hues she made were pretty gorgeous. And a lot less controversial than petitions for Air Force guys in trouble with the government!

  But he needed to get out of Mrs. Emerson’s line of fire. “Sorry, Gin. I’ve got a big report due tomorrow I gotta get to. But be careful with that iron.”

  She eyed him. “You okay?”

  Geez, she could see right through him—great for a budding reporter, maybe, lousy for a big brother trying to exit a room. He made himself appear nonchalant and said, “Sure.”

  “Shoot, I didn’t know you had that report, honey,” said Abigail. “What’s it on?”

  “Ahhh…ahhh. The Roman Empire.”

  “Goodness, that’s a large topic,” chirped Mrs. Emerson. “What aspect? Which emperor? I hope it’s not on that Caligula. No teacher should be talking about him! What is your teacher’s name?”

  “I don’t know who Caligula is, Mrs. Emerson,” he fibbed. His teacher had shared a little about Caligula’s cruelties and eccentricities. But Richard sure didn’t want Mrs. Emerson getting the guy in trouble somehow. “No, it’s going to be…to be…on…on Caesar’s campaign.”

  “Well…” Abigail began, saving him as Mrs. Emerson opened her mouth to ask more questions, “before you start your work, could you run over to Vladimir’s house and invite them to come to the bazaar with us tomorrow? Teresa was telling me she was looking for a church for the family. Good way for her to meet some neighbors.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Emerson said, “what a sweet, considerate thought. I invited Teresa to my bridge club with the very same purpose.”

  Abigail continued kneading a ball of dough and rolled her eyes a bit at Richard, knowing a long story was coming.

  “She’s quite competitive, I have to say. But she still charmed the ladies, despite her…ethnicity. She wears it rather well, though, even with some elegance. Something about that Old World allure, don’t you think?”

  Mrs. Emerson didn’t really want an answer from Abigail and kept right on talking. “She had all the ladies fascinated with stories of London during the war. She’d even met Mr. Churchill at a party. She said he was quite the wag. A photographer took his picture—goodness, Mr. Churchill must be close to eighty now—and the cameraman politely said that he hoped he’d be photographing the prime minister on his one hundredth birthday. And Teresa says that Mr. Churchill replied, ‘I don’t see why not, young man, you look reasonably fit to me.’” Mrs. Emerson tittered in appreciation of her story.

  “But, you know…” She paused dramatically and leaned forward, toward Abigail. “Teresa is a bit shocking. She told us all about her Jewish relatives being rounded up and hauled off. Not really conversation for a ladies’ bridge club.” She stopped and pursed her lips. “Oh, and”—her lips slid into a happily scandalized smile—“she even suggested we place small bets, to make it more exciting. Only lollipops and such. But still! We ladies had never done that before.”

  Abigail laughed lightly. Or was it nervously? Her voice sounded really odd. “Placing a bet isn’t so egregious these days, is it? Don told me that Senator McCarthy paid his way through college by betting on his poker games. The most unlikely people seem to be into betting. Horse races, for instance, out in Laurel.” She fell silent.

  Richard stared at his mother. What had gotten into her? What would she be advocating next? Hanging out at pool halls? Besides, Herbert Philbrick said in I Led 3 Lives that a betting man was always a target for coercion—it was a vice Reds could use to blackmail the guy into following commie orders.

  Mrs. Emerson frowned, disappointed that she hadn’t managed to shock Abigail. “There’s more!” Mrs. Emerson lowered her voice to a whisper. “Teresa told us that she has been playing rummy with wives of the Czech delegation. That one was a childhood friend.” She made a face at Abigail and sat back against the bench. “Communists, mind you!”

  Abigail froze, mid-knead. “Really?”

  “Reall
y. She claimed she wanted to keep up her language skills and that the wife had been very dear to her when they were little.” Mrs. Emerson crossed her arms. “I like Teresa, but I certainly hope she has her head in the right place. We all better keep an eye on who comes and goes from that house.”

  “Hmmmm…” Abigail picked up her rolling pin and squashed the dough intently. Then she looked over at Richard, as if weighing something. Finally, she said, “Vladimir is Richard’s friend. Going to our church bazaar is a good way for Teresa to get to know more Washingtonians. That way she won’t have to rely on a friend from childhood. Go on over to their house, honey, and ask if they’d like to come with us. Tell her ten o’clock sharp. We’ll pick them up. She can help us carry the pies into the parish hall.”

  Richard threw his mother a smile of thanks before trotting happily out the front door. He pushed up the collar of his peacoat against the brisk winds that swept waves of fallen red leaves skittering down the street in front of him. When he reached the walk of Vladimir’s house, he could hear his friend furiously playing scales on his saxophone, up and down two octaves, one key after another. Richard knocked. Still the saxophone charged up a hill of notes and back down. Vladimir stumbled and started over, faster.

  Richard knocked again, harder. Another scale ripped through the house.

  He leaned against the door to listen, and could hear orchestral music, too. Teresa must be home. She always had symphonies going on their record player, especially when she was painting. Richard banged on the door. But Vladimir’s music inside only seemed to grow more stormy, more intense.

  He decided to tap on the side door that led to Teresa’s studio. As Richard skirted azaleas to the porch he could see her through its windows. Her easel was up, a canvas half-splashed with color. She held her palette and a brush in one hand, but she was on the telephone. And she looked worried. Richard hesitated. Maybe he should come back at another time.

  Her record ended, violin chords fading. Teresa tucked the phone under her chin and turned to pull the needle off the LP. That’s when she spotted Richard.